Oromo Indigenous Knowledge: Past experiences, current situation & future prospects for promoting sustainable sociopolitical development in Ethiopia

Abstract

This article seeks to vindicate the significance of utilizing overlooked indigenous knowledge of the Oromo to promote socio-political development. This circumstance has consistently been resisted and actively contested by dominant partisan interests. As a consequence, today’s Ethiopia is identified with the practice of conceiving and implementing social, economic and p olitical policies of developed states which has proven to produce failed experiences and false starts. The main cause is that elites and policy experts alienate domestic cultures in its entirety assuming; they couldn’t make meaningful contributions to the way out of sophisticated socio-political predicaments. As per the concern of critical social philosophy, however,
theories/policies are constructive when it is founded on, or theorized out of its own traditions, or conceived theories executed according to domestic realities and qualities. Premised by this view, the article seeks to show the significance of exploring, restoring and reproducing thus integrating indigenous knowledge into socio-political program of the state. To this end, I seek to provide the decisive role that Oromo indigenous knowledge may play in promoting sustainable social development and envisioning emancipatory politics. It is, therefore, far from, nor is intended to be, a descriptive account other than to define theoretical problematic in the context of ongoing intellectual and political program in the nation-state.